In a Hotel Six on Highway Five, After the 49s
by Minisinoo
Summary: Dani Moonstar. A pow-wow. An encounter. A new direction. CBFFA Winner: Best Adult


**IN A HOTEL SIX ON HIGHWAY FIVE, AFTER THE FORTY-NINES**  
  
**Summary:** Dani Moonstar. An encounter. A new direction. (Core canon) 

**Notes & Warnings:** Adult material. Dani disappeared off the X-Men map for a while, so this is my explanation of why she left and what's she's up to. There is a Highway 5 in Stillwater, but no Motel 6 there. The Gable/Colbert film referenced is Frank Capra's "It Happened One Night." 49s are (native) parties after pow-wows, and involve special songs and dances. This is for Captain Average.   


* * *

  
August heat melts and drips off the marching line of pines, smearing an Oklahoma Sunday sunset into tangerine-vermillion stains across the western sky. It provides a backdrop to purple clouds that crowd the northern horizon, like the silhouettes of buffalo grazing. I see it through a window of the gym. Inside, heat is stacked up in invisible bricks, though the air-conditioning is on at full blast. Like the building, it's old and overworked, and too many bodies have crammed into the main arena, overtaxing its capacity. 

We dance anyway. 

_ho-oo-o-o-oo_   
_oh yes, I love you honey_   
_iya hana yo_   
_I don't care if you married sixteen times_   
_I'll get you yet_   
_hay-ha-a-a_

_Hay-ha-a-a_   
_Ho-oo-o-o-oo_   
_I don't care if you married sixteen times_   
_I'll get you yet_   
_hay-ha-a-a_-_HA_

The drum stops. The dancers in their rings stop, but a couple stumble-footed miss the final beat and take another step, and we laugh. Indians laugh a lot because life is funny. When we stop being able to laugh, on that day, we begin to die. 

As an X-Man -- or X-Woman, rather -- I'd almost forgotten how to laugh. That's the reason I left. Yes, I'd wanted a college education (however alien _that_ concept might be to a girl born in Lame Deer, Montana), but mostly, I'd needed to get away from them. So serious. Always so serious. I suppose they've reason to be; not every group of superheroes saves the world on a regular basis. But really. A little humor never hurt anyone. Mine escaped, and I'm on a scouting mission to bring it back, dead or alive. I need to learn how to be Indian again without forgetting I'm a mutant. Creatures of two worlds have special power. 

Now as I leave the big wooden floor, I lift my hair off my neck to fan beneath it and glance about at the sea of faces ranging from peaches-and-cream to burnt sienna under hair that comes in black or brown or one rare red, dressed in pow-wow finery never removed or in t-shirts and jeans. Children skittle around the periphery, chasing each other. One has a toy coup stick. The others scatter, squealing. Adults ignore them; teens suffer them with rolled eyes. They'll entertain each other and exhaust themselves, then drop like puppies on a couple of blankets set up off to one side on the gym floor, watched over by the eldest, who'll trade CDs and movie reviews and reservation gossip -- the moccasin telegraph, adolescent style. We talk about everything. 

Indians crowd the bleachers and Indians crowd the floor. Skins everywhere I look under high floodlights, and it's easy to be here, though I know no one. I sit on the bottom riser of one set of bleachers, elbows on my knees, and just breathe. The drum has paused to consult on the next song, then they start up again with a steady beat and a simple call-and-response. 

A man sidles over. I saw him watching me earlier. He has inky hair and tan skin, a high fleshy nose and powerful shoulders, but it's the kind of power that comes from real work, not the sculpted perfection of Nautilus machines. He's wearing a blue shirt with the word _TAKTANI_ written on it and his eyes are downcast, a courtesy I've grown unused to, living with the white man. "Hey," he says. 

"Hey," I answer. 

"They're going to do an Owl dance." It's a sideways invitation. 

"Yeah?" It's a sideways expression of interest. 

"You want a partner?" 

"Sure." 

So we dance. His palm is warm where mine rests in it and the triple-beat is easy. I lift my feet high and lose myself. 

"You dance good," he says, after. 

"Thanks." 

"You want some punch?" 

"Sure." 

I follow him to the table covered with its blue plastic tablecloth; there's punch in a blue enamel pot, and homemade cookies. And frybread. What would an Indian party be without frybread? There's no beer. 

"I didn't see you dance -- earlier at the pow-wow," he says. 

"I don't dance much these days. Not to compete, anyway. I like to dance, just not to compete." 

He nods while he fills two plastic cups, handing me one. "Me, either. I used to." 

"What event?" 

"Just traditional. None of that fancy shit." 

Punch and four cookies in hand, he points towards a corner where we move to give room for others. "I haven't seen you around here. You new?" 

"Sorta. I'm at the university in Stillwater. I had to get away for a while." 

He smiles at that, then asks the inevitable question. "What tribe are you?" 

"Northern Cheyenne. You?" 

"Lenni Lenape." At my blank look, he clarifies, "Y'know -- Delaware." 

"Gotcha." I take a sip of punch, a little embarrassed. "It's pretty sad when we have to explain our tribes using white-man names." 

He just shrugs. "What's a Northern Cheyenne doing down here anyway?" The Southern Cheyenne have their res in Oklahoma. There are many more of them. My people have a little square of pink in Montana, crammed between Blackfeet and Sioux. 

"I don't know," I hedge. But in truth, I'd chosen Oklahoma for the simple reason that I hadn't wanted to go back to Lame Deer to college, with its limited options, but I also hadn't wanted to go somewhere that I was likely to be very much in the minority. "So what do you do?" I ask him, to change the subject. 

"Work with kids. We got a child development center -- several, actually, and more on the way. I teach preschool." 

It isn't anywhere close to the answer I'd expected. "_Preschool?_" 

"I like kids." It's sharp, and he doesn't look at me. 

"Sorry. I didn't mean it to sound like I was laughing at you." And I wonder, idly, if he got his muscles from lifting recalcitrant four-year-olds, then remember my manners and stick out a hand. "I'm Dani, by the way. Dani Moonstar. Don't you dare laugh at the last name." 

"Aaron Dean." He shakes my hand, and shakes back his hair, too, smiling. He really does have a nice smile. And nice hair. What's an Indian man without nice hair? "So what do you do? Or, I mean, what are you studying, at university?" 

"Haven't decided yet." And I hadn't. College had been about fleeing the X-Mansion, not pursuing a particular career path. But I'll have to make up my mind soon. 

"I tried the college gig," he confesses. "It just didn't work out. Stuck with it two years, then had to go home." 

"Is working with kids what you wanted to do?" 

He shrugs yet again. "I don't think I had anything in mind. I just figured I'd try it since I got decent grades in high school." Shaking his head, he crosses his arms over his chest, the cup of punch still in one. There's a howling-coyote tattoo on his left bicep. "Even so, school was never my thing. Funny how life works out. Now I'm a teacher and I wouldn't trade it. If I ever do go back to college, it'll be so I can make master teacher at one of the new centers. I'm just an assistant now. It don't make much, but it's better than no job." 

And so we talk, and dance some more, and laugh a lot. He moves easily, with a liquid grace like a panther, but it's a different grace from that of my former teammates. There's nothing martial about it. His touch is light. I like the way the light catches in his hair, trembling in patterns of blue and red. He has an interesting face rather than a handsome one. His nose is a little too big, even for an Indian, and his face too round, his eyes too close together. But they crinkle at the corners when he smiles. It's a good face. 

The dancing breaks off for an honoring song, and someone stands up to make speeches. "You want to go for a walk?" Aaron asks. 

"Sure." 

We leave. I'm under no illusion that we'll return. We walk a bit on the sidewalk around the gym. It's a humid night in August, but windy, whipping my hair about and wrapping it across my face; I gather it all in my hands and shove it inside the collar of my shirt. Somewhere far off, I can hear the low hum of vehicles on a highway. There's a car in the lot with its lights on. After a few minutes, the engine starts and it pulls out to drive past us, headed for the exit. The high beams flash over us, a stab of yellow-white that picks out the letters on his shirt. "I never did ask you what that shirt means," I say. 

"I don't know." 

"You don't know?" 

"No." He grins; it's mischievous. "That's what it means -- 'I don't know.'" 

Indian humor. It startles a laugh out of me. 

"I like your laugh," he says. 

"Thanks. I like yours, too." 

"You want to go somewhere?" 

It's blunt, but we've done the proper circle dance first. He's a polite Ind'in boy, and now it's time to get down to business. Indian manners confuse whites. I don't think my teammates ever really understood mine, and Sam Guthrie told me once that I was the most contradictory woman he'd ever met, shy one minute and brazen the next. He couldn't predict me. Well, the feeling was mutual. Sometimes the only X-Man I connected with was Jimmy Proudstar, though we never became good friends. It wasn't that I disliked him, but that we had little in common besides being Red and being X. Nonetheless, being Red was sometimes all I wanted. We could trade jokes about Cooking With Commodity Cheese. 

Aaron is different. I like him as a man, not just as an Indian, and because I like him, I feel that I owe him the truth. "Yes, I'd like to go somewhere. But you ought to know -- I'm a mutant." 

He peers at me in the darkness. "So?" 

Given all the hostility lately in the media, that simple reply surprises me. "You don't mind?" 

He smiles and his eyes crinkle again. "Should I? We have a couple mutant kids in the preschool, and one of our substitute teachers is, too." 

"And no one complains?" 

He stares at me. "They're still Lanape, ain't it?" 

And there it is -- the difference. Outside Indian country, a person is mutant or human; all other categories fade these days, it seems. But it's not so simple to us. The people come first. My tribe chose to shun me years ago; they were scared of me, called me a witch. They didn't understand that I wasn't making others' nightmares come true on purpose. But no one ran me off the res, and no one threw stones, or fired bullets. That's not how shunning works. We're perfectly capable of shooting each other, but we do it for other reasons. Whatever the tribe thought of me, I didn't stop being Cheyenne. In the years since, some bridges have been mended, and even if I won't go back to Lame Deer, I'm still Cheyenne. I will always be Cheyenne, just like Coyote doesn't stop being Coyote when he puts on a sheep's coat. Drape me in Xs and I'm still Cheyenne. 

"Okay," I say. "Let's go." 

We walk out to my car, a Honda Civic with silver paint, because silver doesn't show dirt as much. It had been a gift from the professor when I'd left New York. I hadn't wanted to take it, but Sam and Rahne had talked me into it. "You need wheels," Sam had said reasonably. Sam was always reasonable. So I'd taken the car, but it needed ten years, a dozen dents and a broken headlight before it was an NDN car. 

"I came with friends," Aaron told me now. He doesn't bother to go back in and alert them that he's leaving; they'll figure it out. 

We get in my car. He rolls down the window and beats time to the radio on the side of the door as we cruise down Highway Five outside Stillwater, headed southwest. The night air slides in and wraps around us, ruffling hair and stirring clothes. It whispers of dried summer grass, dust and river water, smoke and sage. I wonder what's burning. The stars are so bright they hurt the eyes. We drive out of time on a road between worlds. Mutant and human. But it's one road. The Red Road. One big, muscular Indian man, one slightly skinny Indian girl with eyes too big for her face. Mama always said I looked startled, like a deer, even when I wasn't. 

We stop at a convenience store. It's late, and the white counter help watches suspiciously as we wander aisles, stocking up on honeybuns in plastic (with condensed wet sugar glazing), Cheetos, and Pepsi. At least we'd agreed on the Pepsi. There have been divorces for less in Indian Country. We carry it all to the check out. The boy there chews gum loudly, and his eyes are that flat blue that looks like water under ice. They size us up. His baseball cap proudly touts the Oklahoma Sooners. "That be it?" 

"Yeah," Aaron says, pulling bills out of his pocket and dropping them, wrinkled like white trash, on the counter. After ringing up the sale, the boy gathers the bills and unfolds them. His movements are precise. He puts them in the cash tray and gives Aaron change. Then he wipes his fingers surreptitiously on his jeans. One doesn't need to be mutant to be the scum of the earth. We take our food and leave; Aaron holds the door for me, even with his hands full. 

We open Cheetos in the car, and a bottle of Pepsi. I dial stations on the radio with neon-orange fingers. I'm convinced that only cockroaches and Cheetos would survive a white man's nuclear war. "Stop," Aaron says when I pass over something by Vince Gill. 

_Feels like sunshine, feels like rain_   
_Lord it feels like love finally called my name_   
_I wanna jump and shout; I wanna sing and dance_   
_Lord it feels like love wants a second chance._ Me, I'd settle for a first chance. Being an X-Woman doesn't leave much time for romance. Aaron is singing along softly. His voice is nice, but not fully on pitch. Like much else about him, it's normal. 

In the distance, we see the glow of a motel sign with a big red "6" on a blue background. "That looks good," Aaron says. I pull in. I have more money than he does, so I get the room; he got the food. The key is attached to a elongated copper plastic diamond with "201" etched in white. The number suggests that our room will probably be on the end, and that suits me fine, as it means we only have to worry about people on the other side of one wall. We drive around until we find the right area. On a Sunday night in early August outside a university town, the motel isn't exactly overflowing. We don't say much as we grab our food and go in. He has no luggage. I do, but I don't bring it inside. 

A cheap, purple-blue floral bedspread covers a king-sized bed, and the TV's remote control is bolted down. The furniture is cheap veneer in a shade of medium-dull, but they have a four-cup coffeepot on the little vanity off the bathroom, and that makes points with me. 

Yet now that I'm here, I'm not sure what to do next -- aside from the obvious. Aaron sits down on the end of the bed and watches me wander about the room, checking things. "You act like a cop," he says. It's not a rebuke or a complaint, just an observation. 

Startled, I look around from the bathroom door, where I'd stopped to glance inside. Was I so transparent? Old habits die hard -- and old paranoia. "Sorry," I say. 

He shakes his head and spreads his hands, then pats the ugly bedspread beside him. "Sit down." 

I do. 

We turn on the TV and flip through until we've settled on an old black-and-white film with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. 

_"Good morning. Remember me? I'm the man you slept on last night." _How appropriate. 

I always thought Clark Gable would have been handsome, if not for the ears. Or maybe that's part of his charm. 

_"Such big ears you have!"_   
_"The better to hear you with, m'dear."_ But has the white world ever listened to us? 

Aaron leaves the TV on as he turns me to face him, kissing me tentatively. "Do you want to do this?" he asks. 

"Yes," I answer. 

"You sure?" 

"I'm sure." 

He lifts my ribbon shirt over my head, but instead of tossing it on the floor, he folds it neatly and throws it over the back of a chair. I take off his t-shirt that declares "I Don't Know." He has nice skin, all smooth. I lick it. He lets me. 

We have sex in the blue glow of the television. We don't make love; we aren't in love. He kisses my breasts as if they taste good, the same way I'd nibbled his skin. His weight, when he climbs on top, pushes me into the mattress and holds my legs apart until they're a little loose-jointed. I don't mind. He fills me. The moon slides through a crack in the blinds, licking his skin just as I had earlier. Meaningless words rise and fall in the background, and there's a commercial break as we arc to our peak, gazing out across a plain of pleasure. I bite my lip and taste salt. Coyote is howling. 

Our legs tangle, his lighter brown to my dark brown. I smell smoke again, a rich-sharp sweet spike of white sage. Pound, pound. We circle at the edge of the world, riding the horses of the horizon, buckskin and black, roan and gray, tails all roiling and tangled. Sex is a rhythm like horses dancing. 

I cry out, but don't know what I'm saying. He whispers in my ear, but I don't remember what he says. This is a road we walk together alone. I clench his hips with my thighs, and there are fireflies behind my eyelids. They dance among the horses' tails. 

Free.   
  
  
  


I wake later. The TV is still on low, and I don't know what time it is, but it's somewhere in the middle of the night. A body lies beside mine. I curl an arm around it and bury my face in skin. Mutant, human ... skin is skin. He smells like man and salt. And Cheetos. I move a little; my vagina is sore and my legs are stiff, the thigh muscles unused to the weight. It feels good. Sleep takes me a second time. 

When morning comes, I slide into wakefulness and grow aware that the bed is empty, stark, but for the imprint of a body. The sheets are still a little warm; I roll into that warmth and open my eyes. Aaron moves in the gray of dawn like a shadow's echo. 

"You're going." 

It isn't a question and he doesn't answer. 

"Did it scare you, to fuck a mutant?" 

He glances around at me finally. "Power is power," he says. "It matters how you use it, not what it is, Cheyenne girl." 

That could have been my grandfather speaking. 

"I'm not afraid of you," he adds. 

And he isn't. There's nothing of fear in his mind, nothing of fear that I taste with my power. If I made his nightmares out of smoke, they'd take other forms. The destruction of the land. The shattering of the people. These are larger fears than quarrels over DNA. 

"There are no differences greater than a whisper," he says, and pulls on his t-shirt. 

This morning, it's an empty, pure blue, all words erased. No more _TAKTANI. _No more, 'I don't know.' 

Dressed fully, he smiles at me. "Goodbye, Dani." 

Turning, he opens the door and walks out, steps through the metal railing and into the sky, his shirt blending into the color of the morning, the color of a mirage.  


  


  



End file.
